Guest Post by Meghan Forder​​I recently interviewed several principals and teachers for an academic research project, and everyone described multiple ways that they were working to increase parent involvement. The principals talked about community fun nights, school site councils, coffees, and using signs and posters to make families from all backgrounds feel welcome. The teachers talked about using texting apps and rewards to encourage parents to volunteer, return field trip forms, or bring in school supplies.

Community building, communication, decision making, and volunteering are all important types of parent involvement at school. But I was surprised that no one talked about the type of involvement proven to have the greatest impact on student achievement: learning at home.

Study after study has shown that a family’s involvement in helping their child learn at home is essential to academic success (Harris & Goodall, 2008; Sheldon, 2009; Zhang, Hsu, Kwok, Benz, & Bowman-Perrott, 2011). In fact, parents’ involvement in their children’s at-home learning—through basic activities such as parent-child conversations about school, encouragement and discussion of reading, and expressions of interest in a child’s personal and academic progress—has been shown to have more than twice the effect on student test scores than parents’ education levels or a family’s socioeconomic status (SES) (Melhuish et al., 2008). This finding—that parent involvement at home can have more influence on a student’s education than a family’s SES—is extremely important, because SES now accounts for one of the most significant achievement gaps between students. This gap is now nearly twice as large as the black-white achievement gap, and about equal to the gap between children with highly educated and less-educated parents.

Higher-SES families are investing more time and resources in their children’s learning outside of school (Reardon, 2011), while children in poverty are significantly less likely to be exposed to learning activities such as reading at home (Bradley, Corwyn, McAdoo, Garcia Coll, 2001). As a result, the achievement gap between students from rich and poor families has grown 30 to 40 percent since 1976 (Reardon, 2011).

This discrepancy between rich and poor students paints a bleak picture for the American Dream, if low-income students are unable to climb out of poverty through education. But there is a silver lining here, and it’s those studies that show that parent involvement in learning at home can close this gap through simple activities that don’t cost money.

So in addition to their efforts to increase family involvement at school, how can schools help families to help their kids at home? The first thing schools need to do is let parents know what a huge difference their involvement at home can make. Parents who believe their involvement will make a difference are more likely to be involved (Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1997).

Once parents know their involvement is essential for their child to be successful in school, they need to know how to create a home environment that fosters this success.

Text messages are currently one of the most effective ways to reach families across the economic spectrum. Although there is still a socioeconomic divide in internet access and email use, with wealthier Americans more likely to be online (Anderson & Perrin, 2016), nearly 100 percent of American parents with school-age children own a mobile phone (Pew Research Center, 2017). Studies have already demonstrated the effectiveness of text messages as a means of boosting parent involvement by providing educational activities they can do with their child at home (Hurwitz, Lauricella, Hanson, Raden, & Wartella, 2015; York & Loeb, 2015).

Obviously, the home learning environment isn’t the only factor in student achievement. The administrators and faculty I talked to are all using every tool they can find to help their students succeed. But to give students the best possible chance at success, parents have to be more than helpers—they need to be full partners in their child’s learning, with educational tool boxes of their own.

Meghan Forder

Meghan Forder is a communications consultant specializing in research-based information about child development and education. She currently works for the Center on the Developing Adolescent at UC Berkeley.